


retrouvailles

by teabagginses



Series: Taang Week 2020 [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Implied/Referenced Sex, Multi, Reincarnation, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Taang Week 2020, no beta we die like lu ten, the one where your soulmark appears after you touch your soulmate for the first time, zukki is a background relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26626960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teabagginses/pseuds/teabagginses
Summary: Taang Week 2020 Day 4: FutureShe gazes at his pretty grey eyes and knows them, has seen them in multiple lifetimes.
Relationships: Aang/Toph Beifong, Sokka/Suki/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Taang Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932985
Comments: 19
Kudos: 69





	retrouvailles

**Author's Note:**

> retrouvailles (French) - the happiness you feel upon reuniting with someone after you've been apart for a long time

“Are you alright, miss?” a voice asks, soft in the clamor of the snack aisle—

It’s violent, the way Toph’s ripped away from her little daydream, and her body’s still flinching as her eyes and ears slowly readjust to the people around her. There are no flying bisons and wingled lemurs here because they _don’t_ _exist_ , because she’s in a goddamn grocery store.

She tiredly lifts her gaze up – _all_ the way up – to an angelic figure leaning over her, what with the lovely features and the bright light brimming around his shaved head. He’s all broad shoulders and lithe muscles and effulgent tattoos, and even though he looks like an incredibly kind person, something about him sets her teeth on edge. Like she should know him by now even if she’s never met this man in her life.

“Was I blocking you,” she replies, unable to help the flatness of her voice. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Toph moves to walk around him, oddly reluctant.

“No, wait—” the guy blurts out, _panicked,_ his nimble fingers reaching out to curl lightly around her shoulder blade—

And they say it’s like nothing else matters, that touching your soulmate for the first time is like sating a hunger you never knew you had.

She’s always thought that was a fat load of bullshit – what, you meet the stranger that’s supposed to be your other half and it’s happily ever after just like that? – but here she is, a hypocrite to her own thoughts.

Toph hones in on the warmth that’s molded around the curve of her shoulder, feeling a far too pleasant burn smear its way down her spine. She leans away from the stranger by a few inches, just to test it their limits, but fuck, it _hurts._ She’s met him for a total of three minutes and the sensation of _not_ touching him already leaves her with an ache she can’t even begin to understand.

He makes a hurt noise in his throat when she leans away, jarred by the abruptness of their separation. His hands follow after her, touching the points of her elbows this time, and Toph feels the tremor in his hands, hears the quickness in his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, tightening his fingers around her skin. “I know we don’t know each other, but—”

“This is so stupid,” Toph groans, but she’s slipping a palm over his wrist thoughtlessly, touching the thrum of his pulse. “Why a fucking Walmart of all places?”

Her soulmate’s mouth twitches into a smile. “Why not a Walmart?”

Because it’s the lamest place ever, she wants to say, but then she catches his smile and she stutters to a stop. She gazes at his pretty grey eyes and _knows_ them, has seen them in multiple lifetimes.

( _It’s you_ reverbrates in the space of her chest that used to be hollow, that used to be a void tundra.)

There’s a soulmark on her forearm now – long, golden vines with leaves that twist into the complimentary ones wrapped around his own skin, and the longer they touch, the more intertwined their vines become. It’s both thrilling and unsettling since, so far, Toph’s lived through twenty years of her life with a bare forearm. 

“So,” Toph ends up mumbling, because she knows where this is going to lead and because someone has to eventually, “your place or mine?”

* * *

_“Do you really think friendships can last more than one lifetime?”  
  
_ _“I don’t see why not.”_

* * *

Her soulmate’s name is Aang, a vegan pacifist whose happiness seems endless, and the while he’s chirping to her about his life like an excited hummingbird, she finds it harder to fathom why the fates specifically chose him for her.

“I’m talking way too much about myself,” he chuckles in embarrassment, pink dusting over his cheeks.

Shrugs. “I asked.” 

Aang’s curled up with her on his couch – his apartment had been closer - idly playing with one of her hands. Their tea sits on the coffee table, cold and forgotten, but she’s too stupidly inebriated with the feeling of his hands on her own to care. Toph doesn’t mind the constant touching, surprisingly. It feels so much better than anything else, and there’s this still moment where they watch his vines crawl from his fingers over to hers.

“What about you?” He’s close enough for his cheek to brush her shoulder. “Tell me about yourself? Pretty please?”

“I’m an art student,” she grins back, unwittingly, at his enthusiasm. “I go to BSSU.”

He positively beams at this. “I go there too! Why is it that I’ve never seen you around campus before?

“Different curriculum maybe?

Toph feels the heat of his gaze wandering everywhere, stiffening slightly only when it drops to the puckered skin on her right leg. “Is there a story behind this?” she hears him ask quietly, his fingers hovering over the scar, but not quite touching it.

“You’re going to think I’m fucking crazy.”

“Try me.” Aang’s isn’t sporting that bright smile anymore, but his face has softened completely. “If you want, that is. You don’t have to tell me.”

It’s strange and new and terrifying, but he’s a gentle breeze in their bond, surrounding her without suffocating her, smoothing over the points of her body that are maybe a little too rough, a little too jagged.

“Well, there’s this forest near the house I grew up in,” Toph starts, drumming her fingers along his soulmark. “I walked through it so many times that I practically memorized it. I really thought I could navigate myself through the forest blind, so I put on a blindfold—”

(The darkness doesn’t welcome her, not the way she wants it to.

Her bare feet press into the earth and she doesn’t feel the vibrations of the earth moving around her, doesn’t hear the songs of squirrels skittering up the old trees, of worms writhing in the dirt. She feels disconnected from everything, small and _insignificant_.

She carefully glides along the flat surface of the boulders, but misses her next step, falls down and keeps falling—)

“Anyway, now I have a permanent reminder of how much of a dumbass I was,” she says, half bemused, half self-depreciating.

But Aang opens his arms, his face silently pleading, and she hesitates a little. Her soulmate is a stranger wrapped in odd, familiar skin and when they’re pressed together, it’s like they’re speaking an old, sacred language only their bones know.

They should be in bed right now like most soulmate couples their age - or at least kissing, maybe - but she supposes she’ll fail at that too amongst other things.

So, Toph leans in, biting back a satisified hum when his arms coil around her shoulders. He smells like clean laundry and a hint of cinnamon, and when he sighs in content, she feels her muscles relax.

“I like to stand on the edges of high places,” Aang noses against her hair, probably unaware that’s he’s doing it too. “My friends can’t stand it when I do it, but I can’t help it. I never have the urge to actually jump,” he adds in a small laugh, “but I like to imagine that there would be a way for me to somehow catch myself if I do. Then I remember that it’s not possible and I feel this...incredible loss.”

An unexplainable loss you never had in the first place. Yeah, she gets it.

“Thanks.”

“Of course.” His eyes languidly trail after the uplifted bend of her mouth. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

There’s an anxious spike of hope blooming in the pit of Toph’s stomach and it’s not coming from her.

It’s coming from _him_. She doesn't exactly know how she knows this either, but it's all Aang she's feeling. 

Which is ridiculous because Toph shouldn’t be able to feel him like that. Soulmates don’t work like that. There’s soulmarks and the constant need to be close, but not this invasion of other people’s emotions—

“Yeah, sure,” she says.

Everything is okay. Everything is fine.

Get a fucking grip.

* * *

“Some bonds only need an hour of touching and they’re okay for the whole week,” she says at the threshold of his front door, lingering. “Maybe we’re like that? I mean, it doesn’t hurt to try, right?”

“O-Okay,” Aang stutters, brows furrowed, looking like he _really_ wants to follow after her like an imprinted duckling.

Toph lets go of his hand then and the sharp sting she feels should have been taken as a warning. She takes a step back though, forcing herself to play dumb to his white fingers clenched around the door frame and the sudden pallor of his face.

Her fingers tingle in a particularly awful way as she waves goodbye to him and the discomfort is rudimentary, really. It’s nothing she can’t handle, considering she’s had worse done to her skin.

She makes it as far as the turn of the hallway, right when Aang’s out of her view.

Pain grips at her right arm and the numbness flares outward, careening her into the wall. She can’t fucking _breathe_ because it feels like her lungs are being scraped out by a rusty spoon, like her ribs are being branded by hot iron—

Aang _barrels_ into her at a frightening speed and they go teetering to the floor, but he curls his body around hers protectively, _possessively,_ breaking her fall. He’s mouthing something frantic against the hollow of her throat, but she can’t hear it because she’s too overwhelmed by the sensation of his pain pressing down on top of hers.

Whatever she’d felt earlier is vaulting back tenfold and it’s so strange to feel her own emotions looped back to her through a feedback that’s experienced through him. She feels him desperately wanting to take away the unseen hurt throbbing in her while trying to compress his own down and, gods, this isn’t _normal_.

“Um,” Toph whispers, her voice trembling with her body as she clings to him. “Okay, that was a dumb idea. I’m sorry—”

“Maybe you should stay with me for a couple of days—”

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “We have school. How are we going to do—”

“There’s an exemption form we could fill out online. It’s for soulmates who have recently bonded. It’ll get us out of classes, just – please, _please_ don’t leave.”

“I don’t have extra clothes on me or a toothb—”

“You can borrow my clothes. You’ll drown in them because you’re so _tiny_ ,” Aang laughs, hoarse, sliding shaking fingers into her unbound hair. “And I have an extra toothbrush you can use. We’ll figure it out, Toph, please.”

_What the fuck, what the fuck **—**_

“Alright.” She closes her eyes, surrendering herself to raw instinct by sticking her nose to the skin underneath his jaw. “I’ll stay.”

* * *

_“Choose well. A sky bison is a companion for life.”_

_He’s holding an apple in his hands and his legs are jittery – like it’s impossible for him to stay still. The baby bisons are circling their mother in the air and his breath catches because he’s never wanted anything more in his life._

_There’s a small bison just a few feet away, looking like it’s waiting for him. It appears to be the runt of the litter, but that’s okay because he’s the smallest in his class too. If it accepts him, then perhaps they can grow together._

_Biting his lip, he carefully approaches the small bison and offers the apple to it._

_It – no, the bison is a_ he _– sniffs the fruit along with his extended hand before opening his mouth expectantly._

_He tosses the apple in and allows himself to pet the bison on the nose while the latter chews. He doesn’t expect the bison to nuzzle into his touch with a pleased rumble, but the creature does anyway, leaning too far in until he loses his balance and falls on his rear end. The bison licks at the whole of his face, pulling happy giggles from his mouth and he knows, then and there, that he’s found the one._

_“I guess this means we’ll always be together,” he smiles wide, hands rubbing on either side of the creature’s muzzle—_

* * *

Toph blinks awake to find herself plastered to Aang’s back with both of her arms snaked around his chest. One of his hands is clasped in hers, their fingers twined, and she has a leg thrown over his hip as if she’s slept with him like this their whole lives.

His bedroom is small and simple, but there’s a slight airiness to it that reminds her of the temple in her dreams – or not dreams, apparently. She sees this temple in the sky in quick flashes while she's awake too, and if they don’t show her in the company of monks, then it’s always with that six-legged bison.

“I can hear you thinking,” Aang mumbles sleepily.

She presses her face to his shoulder. “Shit, did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, you waking up actually yanked me out of sleep too.” Gently tightens his fingers around hers, reassures her that he’s not upset. “It’s not a big deal. What’s bothering you?” 

_I think I’m seeing your memories from a past life_ never quite leaves Toph’s mouth.

“Nah, it’s nothing.”

And maybe that’s the wrong thing to say because Aang just turns in her hold and exhales into her neck, slipping his arms around her waist. His fingers tease the hem of a shirt that’s too big on her and he asks in a hushed tone if it’s okay. Toph nods, her skin shivering in loose delight once his palm slides underneath the shirt to splay itself flat against the small of her back.

The moonlight peeking through the curtains shows her one side of his face – the argent in his eyes, the fan of his inky lashes, the indent of his cheekbone. Objectively, he’s stunning, so she could have done a whole lot worse. 

“You know I can tell you’re lying, right?” The corner of Aang’s mouth lifts, amused. “I can _feel_ that something’s wrong.”

“Can we just—” Opens her mouth and shuts it, frustrated inside. He rubs his thumb in calming circles against Toph’s skin and she still doesn’t know if she likes how one touch can clear her muddled thoughts just like that. “Can we just pretend that we don’t have some weird telepathic-empathic thing between us? Just for tonight at least? Fuck, it’s a lot to unpack on the first day.”

His hurt is muffled, but it’s _there_ and she feels it her chest, taking root. “You think it’s weird?” he whispers, sounding like an open wound.

“Doesn’t this freak you out?”

“Yes, of course it does.”

But underneath the blanket of her own emotions, she senses fear for this bond. Fear at the thought of Toph rejecting him so quickly. She tightens her leg over his hip instinctively, telling him _no,_ she’s not rejecting him. She doesn’t think that’s even possible at this point. 

He presses a smile into her clavicle, relieved. “Do you remember dinner? When you were groaning after taking the first few bites of the pasta?”

Toph blushes. “Don’t make fun of me! I didn’t know artichoke sauce was even thing!” Or so delicious. “I was caught off guard, okay?”

“You were happy eating what I made for you and I felt that happiness,” Aang says, so soft. “It felt beautiful. _You_ felt beautiful, Toph.”

( _And I’d give you the whole world to keep you happy forever,_ he sings into her veins even if he doesn’t realize it yet, even if he’s just as scared and lost as she is.)

What an optimstic fool he is. “I might drive you nuts,” Toph throws back instead.

“Oh, I know you will.”

She pinches Aang's side, cackling at his high-pitched shriek even when the sharpness of her index finger and thumb on his skin echoes against her own.

* * *

“Where the hell have you been!”

“Chill, Sparky,” is Toph’s lazy response as she waltzes into her apartment, leading Aang in by their tangled fingers. “I texted you.”

“‘Be back in a week, dude’ doesn’t give me much to go by. A fucking _week?_ You could have been dead for all I knew!”

“Stop projecting your sibling issues onto me. I’m here, aren’t I? Besides, when you found Sokka and Suki, the three of you didn’t leave your room for more than a week, you dirty hyprocrite!”

“At least you knew where I was the whole—” Zuko abruptly closes his mouth, his gaze darting to the towering man at Toph’s heels. “Aang? Wait, how do you two know each other?”

Toph lifts both their arms, showing him the fresh knitted vines gleaming on their skin. “He’s my soulmate. How do _you_ two know each other?”

“I know Sokka and Sukki,” Aang chimes in cheerfully. “Wow, what a small world, huh?”

“How’d you two—”

“Anyway,” she interrupts brashly, not in the mood to retell their romantic, fateful meeting at Walmart, “Aang’s gonna be staying here for a week and then I’ll go back to his place for another week, and so on and blah blah. At least until the bond settles. You get it. Let us know when dinner’s ready,” she adds, practically yanking at Aang until they’re both confined in her bedroom.

Aang taps the end of her nose. “That was mean.”

“Please,” Toph makes a point of rolling her eyes. “Zuko barely said a word to me after touching the other two. They burst into the apartment like a fucking hurricane, almost doing it right there in our living room. So fucking rude.” 

* * *

She’s in the shower when she suddenly feels absolute _terror_ choking at her, nearly making her slip on the tiles.

Toph barely wraps herself up in a towel before she’s barging out of the bathroom, extremely thankful that her room’s close by. Aang's on the floor, back leaning against the frame of her bedroom door, quivering fingers curled around one of her older sketchbooks. He blindly reaches for her when she approaches, pulling her down onto his lap and burying half of his face into her shoulder blade.

“Is my art that terrifying?” Toph tries to joke, but he doesn’t even smile.

The drawing had been done in charcoal, dark and blurry around the edges, and she almost doesn’t remember drawing it. There’s an enormous centipede _thing_ crawling out of a cave, its legs reaching out to take, to steal. The only colors on the sketch are the red lips and the grey eye markings of the Noh mask it’s wearing on its face, but she’s not sure if that makes it better or worse. 

Aang’s voice is a quiet, little thing when he asks, “Where did you see this creature?”

( _“My old friend, the Avatar,” the monster utters in a serpentine hiss. “It’s been a long time.”_

_“You know me?”_

_"How could I forget_ you? _One of your previous incarnations tried to slay me,” it accuses, the white mask flickering into the face of an older man with a mustache and a long beard, “maybe eight or nine hundred years ago.”_

_“I didn’t know that.” It’s difficult, keeping his emotions out of both his face and voice. “Why did he – or I – try to kill you?”_

_The thing changes again – a beautiful woman this time, with long brown hair and familiar, sad eyes._

_“Oh, it was something about stealing the face of someone you loved.”_ )

“A nightmare, I think,” Toph answers carefully. “Actually, you know what—”

She rips the page out of the sketchbook and crumples it tightly in her first. It feels like an ugly omen against her palm, riddled with malice and sadism, and she chucks it into her trash can. 

“You didn’t have to do that. That was your work,” Aang murmurs, his guilt gnawing at her.

“It was a creepy-ass drawing. I don’t know what I was thinking when I drew that.” Pause. “I have better stuff on my desktop if you want to look.”

He kisses her shoulder, smiling sweetly. “I hope the creatures on there are less frightening.”

“Don’t be such a wuss. Wanna see what a badgermole looks like?”

* * *

After their soulbond settles, they’ve learned that they can get through the day by themselves relatively alright as long as there was skin-to-skin contact for at least an hour beforehand. It no longer hurts to be away from Aang, but it _is_ uncomfortable as fuck, like an itch burning inside that’s screaming at her to scratch it until it’s bloody and raw.

Which is fine.

So ridiculously fine.

The lecture is a drone in the back of Toph’s mind as she doodles along the corner of her notebook page to take her mind off the itch. The mintiness of the gum she's snacking on ebbs away suddenly, turning into something _vastly_ different.

She chews again, tasting raspberries, fruit juice, bananas, and...almond milk?

Aang is waiting for her outside the door when her class ends and as soon as he sees her, his entire face lights up like the sun. His content rolls over Toph in a soothing whisper and she subconsciously mimics his smile, her body humming with _want_.

In spite of the protesting noise she makes, Aang scoops her up in his arms until her feet are dangling above the ground. He nuzzles his cheek to hers, his breath warm against the ridge of her ear, and he twirls them once because he can’t help himself. She hisses at him to put her down, but it doesn’t really bother her as it normally would with literally anyone else. 

“Did you have a smoothie?” Toph asks.

“Yeah.” He keeps his hands pasted to her hips, his eyes bright with excitement. “I tasted the gum you were chewing earlier.”

“I want to say that I’m surprised, but am I really at this point?”

A deep chuckle as he cups her face in his palms. “Don’t be so glum. Think of all the possibilities! What if you’re really hungry, but you don’t have time to get food because you’re taking a test or something? I could eat something and you’d be able to taste it.”

“Oh, yeah, _super_ cool. What if you’re hungry and I decide to get a hamburger?”

He blinks, his grin faltering. “I’m vegan, Toph. You know that—”

“You’re not actually eating it – you’re only getting a taste. Like you said, all the _possibilities_. You ever want to try a steak? Or a milkshake with actual milk?”

Toph bites back a smile, doing a poor job of concealing how much she really enjoys it when he gets all flustered.

* * *

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“You drunk already?” Sokka passes a bemused glance at her. “I don’t remember you being that much of a lightweight.”

It’s warm in the bar – she can tell by the slight flush on Sokka’s cheeks that has nothing to do with being intoxicated – but Toph still burrows her nose deeper into the wool scarf coiled around her neck, still tightens her coat around her. Aang may be on the other side of the city, but he’s somewhere outdoors, somewhere _cold,_ and the alcohol isn’t making her any warmer.

Aang doesn’t do well in colder weather, but he’s having fun with his friends even if he’s getting the both of them sick. She can feel him _missing_ her, missing the press of her fingers on his skin even though they’d seen each other hours ago. 

“You have _two_ soulmates,” Toph grumbles. “The idea of past lives shouldn’t be _that_ fucking implausible.”

His shoulder gently bumps against hers. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

“I’m not upset—”

“Okay, okay, let’s start over,” Sokka smiles at her, completely genuine and not at all mocking. “Why do you suddenly believe in reincarnation?”

“I have these dreams,” she says, her brows knitting together as she curls her hands tighter around her glass. “Well, I used to think they were dreams, but then I’d see something while I’m awake. They’re always about Aang in this completely different life and it’s like I’m a passenger in his body, just going through the motions.” 

“And you think these things are actually his memories from a past life.” 

Toph exhales quietly, the lines of her body losing their tautness. She feels mildly less insane now that someone’s acknowledged it for her.

“They feel too real to just be my imagination. It’s always him in the same timeline.”

Sokka hums, thoughtful. “Maybe they _are_ his memories, Toph. Who knows? Soulbonds can’t be explained, but people accept them anyway. For what it’s worth, I believe you.”

“If this is you making fun of me, I swear to—”

“No, I really mean it! Like, if I didn’t end up with Suki and Zuko – or either of them – in a previous life and reincarnation’s just a thing that’s giving me a second chance to actually be with them, then that’s pretty cool. Fate’s doing me a solid.”

“Second chances,” Toph muses, more to herself than anything.

“Yeah, why not?" He downs the rest of his glass. "On a side note, what else are you feeling from Aang since the bond started? Something tells me you guys are...not normal.”

Toph starts to respond, but then she hunches over the counter, shoulders shaking. It _slams_ into her out of nowhere and she has to clamp both her hands over her mouth to muffle the uncontrollable laughter. She’s yanked further and further into Aang’s joy, feeling it so keenly that the corners of her eyes begin to prickle with tears.

“What is happening,” Sokka blurts, alarmed and concerned. “Are you having a stroke—”

“One of Aang’s friends did something stupid and funny,” she hiccups out in short breaths, still guffawing. “It might – it might have been Bumi.”

Sokka gawks at her, frozen in place. He then orders another round of drinks for the both of them.

* * *

_Monk Gyatso lies against the wall, just bones and dust, and the omniscient rage of a thousand lives sinks down on him—_

* * *

The weight of his grief completely buries Toph, so much that she collapses in a public restroom. Her fingers scrabble at the tiles beneath her, desperate to clutch onto something, _anything_ , as the memory consumes her. Something vibrates in her pocket for a long, long time, but she’s too busy screaming soundlessly into her palm to notice.

Panic slips into Toph, making her blood run cold, and the longer she ignores her phone, the more frenetic her soulmate feels—

“Toph?” is his voice on the other line, wildly frantic, when she finally answers the call. “Did someone hurt you? What’s wrong, where are—”

“I—” Her breath comes out in harsh pants. “It’s o-okay. You don’t need to come.”

Rustling, like Aang’s already preparing to step out. “No, no, that’s not what it feels like,” he argues softly, and now there’s pain in his voice because she won’t let him come to her, won’t let him take _care_ of her—

Her chest squeezes tighter, aching. “I slipped. I’m, uh, good now.”

“Toph, _please._ ” His voice breaks and she screws her eyes shut, tasting saltwater in her mouth. “Please let me come to you. Tell me where you are.”

So she whispers back that she’s at the tea shop near their school, the one owned by Zuko’s uncle.

Aang rushes into the women’s restroom ten minutes later – a feat in itself, considering the usual commute is twice that amount – and she’s never wanted him to see her like this, hunched under one of the sinks and sobbing over a memory that isn’t even hers.

He sucks in a sharp breath like Toph’s pain _cleaves_ him. His eyes are red-rimmed and she can’t even look at him because she’s so _sorry_. She’s sorry that he’s lost his people, sorry that he’s lost his home, sorry that he’s lost his entire culture.

The way he stalks over to her is noiseless, ghostlike even, and then he’s plucking up all the bird bones of Toph’s body, folding himself around her and concealing her from the rest of the world. It makes her cry harder, if anything, to the point where she’s dry-heaving against his chest, but it helps when she pushes her hands under his shirt to touch the tight skin around his hips.

She tells him everything. That he was raised by Air Nomads in another life. That he was something called the Avatar. That they lived in a world where people could manipulate the elements as they pleased.

That they lived during a long, long war.

“You controlled the element of air first,” Toph rasps out later, when it finally doesn’t feel like her lungs are going to give out on every inhale. “You and Appa got caught in this storm, and then you did something that left you frozen at the bottom of an ocean. Katara and Sokka found you, but when you came back to the Southern Air Temple, everyone was dead and it had only felt like you left days ago, but a fucking _century_ passed—”

To his credit, Aang doesn’t once ask who Appa is or what the Southern Air Temple is supposed to be. His heart beats faster and his skin jolts at the familiarity of her words, but he holds her still.

“Breathe, T,” he says, rocking her, sweeping her dark hair away from her neck so that he can kiss the small space behind her ear.

She does. Inhales for four seconds, exhales for six—

It’s a breathing technique that Monk Gyatso had taught Aang. Had taught her.

Their soulmarks cling to each other distressingly, her aurelian leaves and vines overlapping his.

“Do you ever dream of me?” Toph asks, calmer.

“I have _many_ daydreams about you.” And that’s mischief slanted against her nape, rounded out by his mouth. He’s soft and playful now, making her sink further into his embrace. “When your memories come to me, I don’t actually see anything.”

Tries not to be too disappointed. “Oh.”

“No,” Aang smudges a smile against the corner of her mouth, gently thumbing a tear-stained cheek. “You were blind in your last life, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t see. You didn’t _need_ to. You felt these vibrations in the earth and it allowed you to see and hear things no one else could. You were the greatest earthbender that ever lived.”

“She sounds way cooler than me.”

He tips her face up. “You’re just as cool as she is,” Aang breathes, and there’s a brush of lips against hers, slow and sweet. “Just as beautiful.”

( _I found you again,_ her soul thrums out, the loudest it’s ever been inside her.)

Toph twists in his arms, chasing after his mouth. It’s almost too much and not enough at the same time, tasting his honeyed delight and feeling it mingle with her own. His hands shove themselves up her sweater to frame the space of her back as he parts his mouth, allowing her to—

“Gee, it looks like you guys are fine in here,” comes a monotonous drawl that has them breaking apart, sputtering. “And here I was, worried for no apparent reason.”

“Mai!” Aang practically yells, his ears turning beet red. “When did you – why are—”

The other girl waves a dismissive hand. “Toph and I were going over work. What was supposed to be a five-minute restroom break turned into a _forty_ -minute one,” she adds pointedly, raising a brow. 

“Sorry,” Toph says sheepishly. “I had a thing. Like a panic attack or whatever. It’s gone now, so no biggie.”

Aang, severely disagreeing with her on that last statement, wraps her up tighter in his arms.

“We’ll continue tomorrow,” Mai says then, and it may just be Toph’s imagination, but she thinks she sees the former’s face soften a bit. “Get some rest.” 

After Mai leaves, Aang plays with her loose hair. “We should probably leave too.” 

“Yeah.”

But Toph’s leaning in, pausing only a few inches away from his lips and grinning when he automatically closes the distance. She feels that buzzing of happiness again and whether it’s his or hers, it doesn’t matter.

* * *

Aang’s shoulders are still quivering as he drops shaky, open-mouthed kisses along the crease of her hip. He’s been pulled apart to pieces, beautifully and painstakingly, and the remnants of bliss still drumming within him makes it slow to put those pieces back together.

She only knows because she feels the exact same way. She feels _everything._

“You’ve ruined me for anyone else.” His voice is _wrecked_ and his lips are so kiss-swollen, but he’s still this hopelessly exotic thing sprawled between her legs. There’s an indelible glaze to his to expression that makes him look so _thoroughly_ fucked, and when he rests his chin on her stomach and looks up at her with soft, needy eyes, something inside her chest just melts.

“Why didn’t we do this sooner?” Toph husks out with a laugh.

“Yeah, why didn’t we,” he murmurs back, still loopy, nosing the skin around her navel. 

Toph strokes her fingers along the arrow inked on his head, pulling a quiet mewl from him. The arrow tattoos on his body are the same design, the same placement – just the wrong shade of blue. These lines are darker than the ones she sees in his memories.

Maybe the effervesent, illuminating blue that once marked Aang as an airbendering master doesn’t exist in this world.

“Can you skip your classes tomorrow?” he asks.

“Why?”

His answer is a trail of wet kisses up the flat stretch of her belly. “Because I want to keep doing this.”

“Really.” Toph plays off as nonchalant, even when her heart skips a beat. “You want to render us incapable of walking by the time we’re done?”

“Toph, I don’t think I’m able to walk _now_ ,” Aang chuckles, before looking up at her from beneath his lashes, coy. “But I still want you in my bed whether we’re having sex or not. I just want _you.”_

His want reverbrates in the apex of Toph’s thighs and she wishes she can be as open as he is. She wants him in her bed forever, but the words become stifled in her throat, never leaving her mouth. He smiles at her though, tender and adoring, like he knows what she’s trying to say. 

She rolls them over, straddling his hips. Gratification seeps into her at the way his pupils dilate, at the way he takes her in breathlessly.

* * *

He’s upset – so very, _very_ upset – and she doesn’t know why.

Toph feels it two blocks away from his apartment and it spurs her to walk faster, to the point where she’s running.

After letting herself in, she finds Aang leaning over the kitchen counter, the stiff lines of his back obvious through his thin shirt. She leans her back against the counter and presses her elbow to the nimble fingers constricted around dark granite.

“What’s up, grumpy?”

Her soulmate breathes out noisily, his shoulders bunching forward like he’s trying to make himself much smaller than he is. He doesn’t turn to face her, doesn’t immediately trap her in his arms like he usually would after a long day apart. He leans against her though, heavy, part of him trying to disappear into the pale abyss of her skin.

“We weren’t married to each other,” Aang whispers, horrified. “I was married to someone else _._ A non-bender, I think. I don’t recognize her voice. _”_

And there’s really no point in getting angry with Aang or this mystery woman because the past is the _past_ , but jealousy festers anyway, scratching at her bones. She tries to taper down it to keep him from feeling it, but he flinches, looking even more miserable than before.

She tries for apathy then: “So? It was in the past – a past we’re only barely starting to get details from.”

“But I was still seeing _you._ I had kids with this woman, but I was still sneaking around with you—”

“Okay, so I was a side chick. Whatever, that’s fine—”

“It’s not _fine_ ,” a muscle in his jaw jumps, “none of this was fine. I’m seeing this from your persepective, remember? You weren’t okay with this.”

“Why does it fucking matter?” Toph spits, a small part of her regretting it when Aang’s mouth pinches into a thin line. “Maybe we never got together. Maybe sex on the the side was our only option. Whatever the fuck we did in that lifetime, it’s got nothing to do with what we have in this one!”

( _“She’s beautiful,” he murmurs, gazing down at the newborn. “Did you decide on a name?”_

_“Suyin’s kind of pretty. Has a nice ring to it.”_

_Tightly swallows. “Toph, is she – is she mine?”_

_“Don’t worry about it,” the woman in bed mumbles. “It’s not your problem.”_

_“But—”_

_“I’m not repeating myself, Twinkletoes. And she doesn’t belong to anyone but_ me _._ ”)

Then Aang grazes her side with feather-light hands, silently asking for permission. She’s still bristling in her skin, but he makes the frustration and shame go away with just a brush of his palms on her body.

She wants to stay mad at him, wants to stew in silence all by herself, but she physically _can’t_ , not when he’s already made a home for himself in the space of her ribs.

Toph pulls him in with an incoherent grumble, binding her arms around his torso to anchor him back to earth because he feels like he’s going to float away. He shivers against her, mouthing soft apologies against the column of neck as he _clings_ onto her. Even on her tiptoes, her head barely reaches his chin, but she leans on them anyway because she doesn’t want him breaking his neck trying to bury himself in hers.

“Maybe I leave my wife when our kids are older,” he says, his teeth scraping over her shoulder. “I leave her for you.”

“You really think that happened?”

“Yes,” comes Aang’s response, but even that sounds a little unsure. Like he desperately wants it to be true. The uncertainity makes him press into her until there’s no visible space left between them. “Why wouldn’t I do that for you? We’re soulmates. I don’t believe in any lifetime where you’re not always by my side.”

Toph rolls her eyes. “You’re such an embarassing idiot sometimes.”

Aang smiles, his tongue flicking against her jawline. Heat simmers at the pit of Toph’s stomach, rising languidly, and his hands are at the back of her thighs. “I need you,” he sighs, catching her mouth with his.

“I know, you dumb airhead.” 

She quickly finds herself hoisted onto the counter before she’s tipping her head back, letting him unbutton her flannel and kiss his way down—

* * *

_“Don’t worry,” Katara says. “We’ll find you a teacher. There are plenty of amazing earthbenders out there.”_

_There’s a deep wrongness in him as he stares back at Gaoling. Like he’s making a mistake by just giving up and leaving—_

_“Not like her.”_

_After he climbs onto Appa with reluctance, he doesn’t immediately lift the reins. Sometimes, there are rewards to being patient, to sitting still and letting the winds carry their answers to you. When he listens to the currents around him, he catches a flurry of hurried footsteps headed in their direction._

_Delicate hope grows in his chest._

_“Toph!” Happiness etches itself onto his face, wide and open, when the small girl runs out of the forest. “What are you doing here?”_

_“My dad changed his mind. He said I was free to travel the world.”_

_It’s a bold-faced lie._

_But when Toph smiles, something inside his own stomach flutters wildly—_

* * *

“Are you alright, miss?” a voice asks, waking her, his mouth lightly tracing the curve of her ear.

“Fuck off,” Toph mumbles, still face down on the table, in spite of her fingers reaching out to rest along the nape of his neck. The taste of coffee – the strong kind – lingers on her tongue. “M’ tired. Why’d you drink coffee? And a goddamn red eye at that.” 

Aang tugs at her hair teasingly. “Because I almost fell asleep while driving over here to get you.”

“Ugh, you’re going to keep me up all night.”

“I can think of a few things we could do to pass the time,” Aang smirks, nuzzling his nose along her cheekbone. “Or, well, one specific thing actually—”

Toph snorts. “Dork.”

He snatches her up, fingers digging into her side as he drags her onto his lap. Peals of laughter escape her while he tickles her relentlessly, so much that the harder she laughs, the more she feels him eventually shaking with laughter too, amplifying the sensation. One of the campus librarians shushes them sharply and she feels Aang hiding his face into her throat to escape the blame.

“What’s that?” he inquiries out of nowhere then, reaching for something on the table—

“No snooping!” Toph hisses without any real heat, swatting his hand out of the way to shove the tiny book into her backpack.

It’s a flipbook that she’s still working on, showing Aang peacefully bending all four elements. She had originally wanted to illustrate him kicking Ozai’s ass, but she doubts he would like the violence of it, so she’d gone with this instead.

Aang perks up in excitement. “Is it for me? My birthday’s in a couple of weeks, you know.”

Rolls her eyes. “Just wait and find out, Twinkletoes.”

She stands up in an attempt to gather her things, but as soon as she does, the feeling of a thousand pins pricking at her legs washes over.

“Your legs are numb,” Aang glances over with both bemusement and sympathy, on the verge of discomfort himself. “Here, I’ll carry you.”

“Nah, let’s just wait—”

But Aang pulls her arms over his shoulders, picking Toph up until she's literally hanging onto his back, before he grabs her backpack. She _hates_ being picked up in any manner, but it’s a losing battle with a cheerfully persistant soulmate like him. She yanks on the lobes of his ears, but he just grins, hitching her body higher.

“Yip-yip,” Toph says.

“Do I look like a flying bison to you?”

“You’re right, that was a terrible comparison," she replies. “Appa is obviously a hundred times better than you.”

Aang makes an affronted noise, but Toph rests her head on his shoulder blade and kisses the elegant line of his neck, placating him. The brisk air hits her face once he walks out of the library and Toph tucks her face harder into his skin. 

“I had a dream that you were looking for someone to teach you earthbending,” she whispers, wistful and smug. “You wouldn’t settle for anyone but me. Said I was the best out of all of them.”

“There’s no one else like you,” Aang replies easily, thumbing nonsensical patterns under her thighs.

He’d said that in his past life as well.

“Hey, Aang?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t think we ended up together.” Because the snippets of his memories where he’s an adult are a lot sadder, filled with such hurt and longing. “I think we might have crashed and burned.”

Aang breath falters in her ear and he grips her harder, refusing to lose her to their past failures, to whatever broke them.

“We’ll do better this time, T.”

* * *

(And they do.)

**Author's Note:**

> BSSU - Ba Sing Se University 
> 
> To clarify, what's normal for soulmates in this universe - (1) soulmarks appear as soon as soulmates touch each other (2) the need to be touching - the limits of this can vary with every soulmate bond, it all just depends. 
> 
> As you can see with Aang and Toph, they obviously have a lot more going on with them XD
> 
> I hope this wasn't too confusing with the way Toph was receiving Aang's memories. Anything in italics was her seeing a memory. If anything was in parenthesis, that meant that Toph experienced the memory before the present time. If this was all confusing anyway, go ahead and yell at me


End file.
